69 Jewels Left in the Dung-hills: Broadside and other Vernacular Ballads Rejected by Francis Child Rosaleen and David Gregory Abstract: Although The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882 -1898) was the most systematic and scholarly collection of vernacular ballads published in the Victorian era, Francis Child nonetheless omitted from his canon a large number of extant narrative songs, including many found on black-letter broadsides and others that he had printed in his earlier collection, English and Scottish Ballads (1857 -64). This article explores Child's changing approach to ballad editing, discusses his ambivalence towards broadsides, and examines his selective use of texts discovered by English collectors during the Late Victorian folksong revival, with a view to explaining what kinds of material he discarded and why he did so. Francis Child's characterization of the Roxburghe and other collections of broadside ballads is well-known; he called them "veritable dung-hills, in which, only after a great deal of sickening grubbing, one finds a very moderate jewel" (Child 1872, in Hustvedt 1930: 254). Although his magnum opus, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882 -1898), was the most systematic and scholarly collection of traditional ballads yet published, he nonetheless omitted from his canon a large number of narrative songs, including many found on black-letter broadsides. There are two places where we can find vernacular ballads with which Child was certainly familiar but which he deliberately excluded from his second collection. They are his earlier ballad collection, and the various manuscript and printed sources from which he created the later collection. Child's First Approach to Ballad Editing Child was an American literary historian who taught English at Harvard College. He loved old ballads, and he was not afraid to think big. He began his work as a ballad editor in the 185Os, with the aim of remedying the lack of a comprehensive collection of traditional ballads that would bring together material from both Scottish and English sources. The initial result of this project was his first multi-volume publication, English and Scottish Ballads (1857-64), by far the largest edition of English-language narrative poems and songs then assembled. In compiling English and Scottish Ballads Child used broadsides as one of his sources. From the sixteenth century onwards ballad texts had been published on broadsheets and in garlands and chapbooks. Indeed, most traditional ballads turn up first on broadsides. This is particularly true for English ballads, and for ballads for which we possess both English and Scottish texts. Except in a few cases where no broadside versions exist (for example, "Tam Lyn" and "Thomas Rymer"), most ballads come in two forms: an early form as a broadside, and a later form as a manuscript text written down from oral tradition. 70 Recognizing the chronological priority of most broadside sources does not in itself solve the issue of which came first: oral tradition or broadside. To this day, this remains an unsolved problem.1 It is eminently possible that many broadside texts were created by their authors after hearing a traditional ballad sung in a tavern or at a country fair. Yet it remains equally possible that many ballads collected from oral tradition had in fact been learned initially from broadsides. In fact, broadsides may very well represent the single most important source of vernacular songs that subsequently became part of English oral tradition. Although Child commented in the preface that his collection included doggerel "procured from very inferior sources" (1857-64:I:ixI note), one should not assume that all the broadsides that he reprinted warranted this criticism. In fact, he resurrected some beautiful and interesting texts that he would later spurn. He included no tunes, but, since ballads are integral wholes, both melody and text should be given whenever possible. As an example of one of the broadsides included in Child's early collection, here is 'Walsingham" (1857-64: IV: 191-194): As I Went to Walsingham Anon William Chappell Folksong speed, Met I with a jol- ly pal -mer I A II -I I I I1 VI I I, I r]. 1 I I 11 I w in '+ pi1 - gnW weed. As I went to Walsingham, to the shrine with speed, Met I with a jolly palmer there, in a pilgrim's weed. "As you came from the holy-land of Walsingham, Met you not with my true love by the way as you came?" "How should I know your true love, that have met many a one, As I came from the holy-land, that have come, that have gone?" "She is neither white nor brown, but as the heavens fair; There is none hath a form so divine, on the earth, in the air." 1 For a useful discussion of the issue, see Wehse 1974: 324-334. 71 "Such a one did I meet, good sir, with angel-like face, Who like a queen did appear in her gait, in her grace." "She hath left me here all alone, all alone and unknown, Who sometimes lov'd me as her life, and call'd me her own." "What's the cause she hath left thee alone, and a new way doth take, That sometime did love thee as her life, and her joy did thee make?' "I loved her all my youth, but now am old, as you see; Love liketh not the fallen fruit, nor the withered tree. For love is a careless child, and forgets promise past; He is blind, he is deaf, when he list, and in faith never fast. For love is a great delight, and yet a trustless joy; He is won with a word of despair, and is lost with a toy. Such is the love of womankind, or the word abus'd, Under which many childish desire and conceits are excus'd. But love is a durable fire, in the mind ever burning; Never sick, never dead, never cold, from itself never turning." This tune for 'Walsingham" is taken from William Chappell's first collection of vernacular songs, A Collection of National English Airs consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad and Dance Tunes (1838: II: 100). Child was familiar with the song from his study of Shakespeare's Hamlet (Ophelia sings a fragment), but he was aware of Chappell's first publication as well as his expanded edition, the magnificent Popular Music of the Olden Time which was published twenty years later. Child's overall editorial approach in his early collection can only be described as eclectic. He included lengthy romances, such as "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," "The Seven Champions of Christendom" and "The Knight of Curtesy, and the Fair Lady of Faguell." At the other end of the spectrum he slipped in a few other Elizabethan popular songs mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, including "Greensleeves." He also reprinted a considerable number of broadside ballads, such as "Jane Shore," "Queen Eleanor's Fall," "The West Country Damosel's Complaint," and "The Blind Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." He included "Walsingham" and another narrative song by Thomas Deloney, "The Spanish Lady's Love," as representative samples of late Tudor balladry by known ballad mongers. ,English and Scottish Ballads was thus a rich but amorphous collection that comprised a variety of song types as well as some material that appeared unsingable. The net effect of the work was to broaden the notion of a traditional ballad to the point where it was difficult to see what all the specimens had in common. Child's Change of Mind 72 Within a few years, Child began having second thoughts. Correctly suspecting that Percy, Scott, Pinkerton and other Romantic ballad editors had not been above doctoring their texts, he concluded that his great ballad collection was flawed because it reproduced their printed versions rather than the manuscript versions to which they had had access. He also decided that he had been too catholic when choosing what to include. A professional scholar working in a highly positivist intellectual climate, he now aspired to make literary history more scientific. What was needed, he decided, was a new collection based on primary sources that would include all extant versions of every genuinely traditional ballad. Child then set out to locate and, where possible, purchase all the important extant ballad manuscripts, including both the Percy folio and the various collections made from Scottish oral tradition by Scott and his associates. In this difficult and ambitious venture he enlisted the help of various English and Scottish collaborators, but it was still a labour of Hercules that took several decades. Nearly twenty years later Child at last felt ready to bring out the first volume of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. It would take another sixteen years before the edition was complete. The change of title was significant. Child was now convinced that genuinely traditional ballads were anonymous, and that they had a communal origin. To count as "popular" a ballad had to be either very old indeed or of unknown authorship. He consequently decided to exclude ballads that he believed had been composed (as opposed to merely reworked) by such known Elizabethan and Jacobean ballad-mongers as Deloney, Ravenscroft, Johnson, Parker, and Price. Indicative of his change of mind was his new attitude to the work of Thomas Deloney. In his earlier collection, he had included a variety of items from the publications usually ascribed to Deloney: The Garland of Good Will, The Pleasant Historie of John Winchcomb and Wit Restord. He now rejected them, along with all literary ballads by other authors that had been composed as poetry rather than as singing texts.